manchester, new hampshire on monday, the day before the state's primary. live coverage begins on c-span 3. the new hampshire primary is on tuesday, results and candidates' speeches, starting at 7:30 p.m. listen on the free c-span radio app. >> the national association of secretary of state he will its winter conference here in washington, d.c. one of the sessions focusing on elections security and how to address misinformation campaign. this is about 45 minutes. >> we are joining for this winter conference for national security for our state and program elections security. it is my pleasure to introduce

our conference's speaker, mr. clint walsh. . he recently examined and published his first book entitled "messing with the enemy" and surviving in the roles of terrors, russians and fake news. his research and writing focusing on terrorism and counter terrorism and social media influence. this research led clint to testify before four senate committees in 2017 and 2018 regarding russia's information work campaign against the united states and the west.

fbi special agent, the executive offer at west point, the ccc, as a consultant to the fbi's counter terrorism division and nsp. keeping up with the alphabet soup? please join me welcoming mr. clint watt. [ applause ] >> thanks to everybody for having me today. it is a pretty remarkable transition from what i talked about 2016, no one was too interested. not sure if you are aware of

russia interfered in our elections. we have not talked about it much for the last four years. today i want to talk to you about something other than that. a good way to start it off and think about the dilemma that you all face out there in each of these states which has different interests and financial interests and different population that are looking now at different information sources. i think that's kind of where i would like to start. i was in new orleans earlier this week. so i told the story, july 4th weekend and i convinced audience that i was the stunt double because of the movie. had i done that five years later, somebody looked at the internet and told me it is impossible. we would have select it off. we are talking about 2006, you

will have multiple enable information. you would be like this is not true and okay, i will buy the beer. like we just transitioned. if it happens today in 2016 though, would people believe what they saw on the internet or would they believe me? or could i make them believe whatever they want to believe because maybe before i walked in, i posted through social media a bunch of story about the stunt double or i wrote a website that says i am sure -- i layer this stuff out there and then when i walked in. we went from no information where we just kind of laugh, i don't know what to believe. we went from no information to so much information that we actual lino less. that sort of what i think

confound are of our processes. we have more security to look at everybody that's in here today and all the panel you are doing. any election for history. we invested tremendous amount of technical resources, we are bringing everybody to get it and coming up with best practices. yes, no matter what we do, will the public be convinced on election day that the voting is true and safe? that's a big challenge for you. when we think of the information space, i will kind of rewind how this came about for me. i work with a very small team tracking terrorists in syria. i literally keep spread sheets of them. terrorists are vein and they like to brag in syria and eye

r like to brag in syria and eye r iraq australia and europe which wanted bashar al-assad to stay in power in syria. to convince the audience that i am an isis supporter is totally incest since i work at the fbi. there is always conspiracy of what terrorists we are doing throughout the area. what the u.s. government is doing. some people still persist today. from that, what was fascinated about it was i did not believe it would work. it seems super dumb. we looked at a piece of this information, you go well, surely no one believes that.

that seems like a bunch of nonsense. someone still clicks on that e-mail from the guy in nigeria that wants to give you a million dollars. so imagine that in temples of your social media environment if you stick at it over and over again. it wears down the mind, it changes people perception and people are getting smarter about it. at first it was a hacker stealing people's information and dumping it out on the internet. they're gaining incredible capability. i break this sort of information

for the first time here in the d.c. area. everybody was like i don't care about this. we care about isis. this stuff does not work, no one cares. i even skeptical but fast forward in one year. we saw disinformation around military exercise around jay helm down in texas, i specifically remember watching a press conference of army trying to brief the audience that there is not going to be mobs declared in texas. they looked around trying to figure out where the other 200 people were online that said they're going to be there that day and it started to change my perspective about how effective

it is. if you look at what happened in 2016, protests orchestrated by people in russia. what was the message of organizers? make sure to take pictures or take pictures because on social media it can amplify, amplify. i want to move past the russia discussion because if there is anything you should know today and i am sure you are aware and you are in the midst of this in every one of your state and county local city is this is what everybody does now. it is on scale. that's what i want ta talk about today. a range of ways that this election was he will. it was my colleagues and i were watching. i saw it of the most essential thing of what you believe in.

we don't want people showing up. we don't want to see hackers targeting. we don't want people to lose faith. i want to talk about how we got to this point so that we can think about what needs to help you and help you be better informed so you can think about your strategies to go with this. about 2011, when you looked at google, your results were tay r tailored to you. they may be looking at an issue in different ways and so they're starting to get a view of the world. add social media to that and it is information nuclear disaster.

social media is about prefaces that's why we go to it, get the information you want and you get it from people that you like to hear from and you can have it where ever you choose. there are information that you don't like, you can block it out. i come to include that wihile social media as a technology can do better. we can make better algorithm and largely up to us and decide how we want to consume and when we are doing what's good or bad for us. it is one part algorithm and one part us. our discrepancy drives our shaping of the world. in any audience and even with younger audiences now, that world is tailored to you and only you. so you can ask somebody about their protection of it. if they don't have your phone, they're seeing a totally different world.

lots may be the same. we forget that when we talk to people now in person. didn't you see this? yeah, i thought about it. can you believe what happened? yeah, i can. well, i can't believe it. there is changing and perception. everyone's perception is changed on a daily bases. social media placed the plthree biases. the system is made to do what? to give you information that you like from people that look like you. you can't unwhiine the biases. the first one is a confirmation bias. i like this. it is a "like" sign. here is another batch of this, too. i like it. i am one of those weird stalkers at coffee shops that watches old

people on facebook. i watch how they interact with technology. the human body is not meant to process nine things a minute and send them out. think of amplifications. i hear staffs saying we had the same problem when the printing press came out. no, there were not 9 million printing presses. we are talking about scales of information, the human body can't process that much information. you fall for fake news because you went from looking at ten stories a day to 110 stories a day. even if you make a mistake only one time, you are still pushing information on scale, fake news, false information and

misinformation about your election and calling site of whatever it may be much faster. that destroys how people take information. no information is too much information and if you can't make sense of the world around you, if you become distorted then -- you can watch what happens in terms of russia and environment. they use that information and annihilation approach where it is so confusing. you just sort of buckle down to your tribe. the second bias that plays out in a big way, through psychological studies, people tend to like information that looks like them and talks like them. your social media feed is are nothing more of people like you. they're your tribe.

this is far more devastating in a developing world. mainstream media outlets and social media reenforces triablism and competition between groups. the third bias is really what's called bias. once you get on your tribe, you don't want to say anything that makes your social media angry. just so i could get the data, what they don't bite. i did this two days ago. you go through my feed, you will see an example of it. 150,000 retweets for why did he say that. he knows the tribe does not like him when people say that. that's full bias changes how people interact on the platform such as when something is said where you know it is true and you don't refute it and you sort

of let it go. okay, they accept this false information into the circle, i will go along with it as well. so those three biases have amazing confounding effects on our democracy and culture. the first one is click on populism. as it is an amazing ability. we had this from a degree. social media allows you to optimize and how do they do that? the algorithm tells you when you are being successful. think how many speech teddy roosevelt would have had to give to figure out the perfect message back a century ago. today you can do that about 24 hours. you can try 20 messages and find which ones that work very well and keep on saying it over and over again. the more you are successful with that message, the more you will

approve. you do that status quo. you can influence the perception of the world. examples, you are dealing with it with your elections, polling places, every single day on social media, one or two direct messages or challenges would go to 2016. everyday for four years, i gotten anywhere from 2 to 100 chorus about that. yes, i think the bovote is miscounted. everyday they ask me the same question. think about how that changes and accrues power. no matter what you tell them, this could become a problem. the scenario with vaccine and i am sure you have seen it in le

ce in recent years. the big one we have today is coronavirus, huge public health crisis. that comes from you put an influence on it and pushing it out. it is hard to not believe them because you want to. the second part is because those people are in your social media nation. i always ask people how much time do you think your kids spend on their phone during the day. no one wants to answer honestly because we know it is not good. the average varies from the survey i have seen, three to five hours a day. for some teens, eight or more. that's not counting television, right? games essentially in there. the more time people spend in the virtual world, the less time they spend in the physical world. the more time their allegiance is changed and some of the surveys are alarming with young people being of alternative form

of government. fo poorly explained. they're open to that. thinking about it overtime, kids will be over taken by the matrix. they'll enlist in the matrix. they love the matrimatrix. 72 degrees, wi-fi, 10 hours a day. way better than actually having to live in the real world. this dynamic is sort of unfolding and realtime changes the l-- so changing that social media nation i think is something that you have to think about and also results in the ultra globe person that wants to stand up every issue but never wants to leave their couch or your angry uncle screams at you

on facebook. facebook is where you go to go yell at who secretly don't like you. dynamic is changed where we are pushing it away oftentimes and draw the attention of people who are on the other side of the world. the country are not who they say they are. >> the third part, the most critical part for you. you as institutional leaders, voting of the process of executing our democracy is essential that everyone has confidence in you. i do. i know and i see what you are doing here today. i see what you are troo ying to to prepare for the election.

it consumes so much of your time that you can't effectively execute the duties of your job. now you are dealing with this information, it is a cause. everyone with an internet feed i believe is smarter than everyone else in the world. this is tough dynamic. when thinking about this, i also want to alert you to something that sits radioigt on tight on . when i started doing this, hackers that really kicks us off. they're the first one to figure out if i hack into information, and post it to the public, i can influence people's behavior and how they think. the second generation which i came in which is dealing with,

reaching the entire audience around the world, how did they do it? they did it by going multi platform and media and communicating in all kinds of languages. it can reach more people. they would translate into dozens of different languages and recruit people whether they knew arabic or not. they would expand the audiences. nation state and russia now have been over taken the system. when they saw the arab spring, people did not know each other. did you think carrying around the world, well, social media is going to beat us. let's hang back. no way. within months to years. everyone in this country going after iran after twitter sort of uprising in the green revolution, every single one of them started moving into this space.

third, infiltrate the roots and destroy the information and information. how do they do that? we call disinformation center which is i bring everybody together. blog posts and comments on news articles and social media trolling and every single country that you can do. what's important to know that the nation is trying to affect you is things they have to be able to do and speak in your language that they want to mess around in your language and your election, they have to be able to speak in english like an american. the easy way to spot them is for some reason they don't know how to use spell check. i don't know why. they make mistakes gr grammatically. they lay their jokes out there. today we have moved to the fourth generation which i call trolling is a service. the biggest and most ground breaking thing for you guys is

you now have a wide spectrum of actors can acquire each of these services either individually or combine them together to amplify this information put at against you. we are talking about everybody at their finger tips. you can hire people to troll. it is remarkable how this is going done. i will kind of move quickly to the next horizon which is just starting, seeshlessentially owne system. this is social scoring. you say something nice about us or you don't get points or you don't get jobs or those kinds of things. >> change people's behavior so they don't want to speak up about their issues or what they want to do.

we like some democracy and we like profits. you had major social media influencers. china says this is the beginning. we'll see you, just wait until we get artificial intelligence online. we'll change your entire world view. you won't have any idea that bad things are happening in one part of the world. they'll have that ability and they won't be the only one. that's what i try to put to you as you are planning these scenarios of having to deal with actors out there. on the right side is actors which i just talked to you about. on the left side is what is important to understand that there are degrees to influence. some easier than others.

telling someone something, changing their views, even just a little bit based on how they vote on social issues. hard but not impossible. the next level players out there are setting up fake think tanks. all voting machines are weak and you can't trust them. this is a combination of law, ultra wealthy people and they're buying media outlets and combining all of these tools to shape your reality. it is really what i worry about for our country as a democracy, can we fight off those who have intent and having resources and pushing and changing views. the reality of our democracy is this the best form of government ever listed on this planet? we can achieve more than any society ever achieved. that's the truth.

that's what i said. many folks wants to argue with me right now. let's think about it on the long-term. we got people from any cultural identity here from all 50 states working together to come up with a solution to make sure that they know their votes count on election day. what other countries can even accomplish, no one can do this. we have to reenforce those things we are doing. public awareness is a big part. the other part is remember fear is a weapon for our adversaries who ever they may be. fear that you won't be able to get to the polling place. when you see those responses, coronavirus has been an amazing example right now fear is

playing with people. that's where you got to be out there aggressively. i am going to close with just a few sort of things to think about in your roles. definitely let me know on time if i am going too long. as countries, the most important thing we can do whether you are a state or local or federal official has a rigid or the truth. your government holds more data. yesterday it was a conspiracy that some russian spokesperson said that the u.s. may be use climate weapon on moscow that's why it was warmer there. i said yes, it is called carbon dioxide and you can read about it on our website, nasa.org. how can you use facts and data?

we have that ability. we were not the only country in the world that has that ability, pulling resources and reject it. rely on that and use it. you actually know things and they don't. you have resources and they have nothing. use those advantages that you have to push back. the other part, anticipating breaches. what i am trying to do, we do a lot of over reading of what people say. it turns out if people talk terrible about you in the news or public, they may hack you as well. who knew? i mentioned to senator rubio like russia did not do you any favor? how did you know that?

i read russia news, they did not like him. you can ask what they may be doing. they may try to be hacking into the system. you can look at these measures and the over states. it will signal what they're doing. the other part is having a reak campaign capability. you should have a play book. the data comes up, what will you do on hour one, hour 12, day one and day seven. how will you deal with these things. this is a big weakness for us. we didn't understand, actors trying to influence people. how do we stay in front of those. the other part is knowing where those websites come from. we see it all the time, a domain pops up, hi, i need to expose the truth and a bunch of documents showing on the website. thank you for exposing this

theft. those are warnings that you can look at if you are speaking in your environment social media space or internet space. i need to start preparing and planning for this that's coming my way. i can tell you right now 6:00 p.m. on friday. it is amazing how many people's pictures id badges. that's the kind of stuff we think about all the time. we see it consistent 2014 and 2015. inside your threat program, understand if you have complaints, how do you actually do your own public social engage

engageme engagement. they think it is dumb or silly. >> too late, it is already out there. they were hacking into something. they know the machine is hacked. time, response. when to response and you know what those are. who you will respond to. trolls who had an account for one week, it is a major institution responding and you are like no, you didn't. and they go i just gained 200 followers, thank you. so you can amplify your center as well. you have to war gain these things and think through strategies. how do you do that? you got to practice. you talk to your team and look

forward. election rigging and voter fraud and machines are down and power outage and hackers and all of those coming forward probably. people want to win or people some where overseas want someone to win. you will have to work in those and make sure the public stays confident in you and not some random social media accounts that's out there. in terms of citizens, this is where i think helps, how do we help people understand the information. i always use this example, when i was a kid, you go to the grocery store, there are alwa always -- i can't remember talking to my parents talking about did alien landed on our

planet? guess what, all of our parents read that. i am like but by printing it on paper and putting it at the grocery store, you wouldn't buy it, but if it's on facebook, you'll send it to me every day. how did this happen? it's about information consumption. the first big one is do you get more benefit or cost from your social media experience. if you spend most of your days with the hair on the back of your neck, you're angry, instead of road rage you have social media rage, it's probably not worth it, you can let it go and your world will probably be better and you'll be happier. the other big part is how do we reinforce physical and virtual connections. there's no going back with young people, by the way, the idea that we're going to give them phone breaks, no, we're not, as soon as they leave our house, they'll be on the phone. how do we bring technology and people together in ways where

it's just a blended environment and young people are together, they're working together? that has happened more probably in the last three to four years largely due to my generation and older souring them on social media behavior, right? they've kind of figured this out on their own. it's more like, how do we reinforce that over time? the big thing is knowing the source of your information you consume. just this week, the guy who lived across the street from me stole the wheels off my chevy nova when i was in high school, the misplaced anger that i have, was sending me totally bogus news that i knew was completely false and posting russian state sponsored propaganda that said that we couldn't trust the fbi. i almost flew to missouri to fight him about the wheels on my car and about the fbi. i was so upset for about five seconds. then i sort of let it go, right? but how does this still happen?

why does russia want to run a news site that just tells you about what's happening in america, in english? they don't talk about what's happening in russia, because you usually don't care, right? why? they want long run. they don't care who wins an election. they want democracy to fall. they want us to retreat in the world. they want americans to not believe in their elected leaders, their officials, and their institutions, and their democratic processes. don't let them do that. we're very good at doing it ourselves. so don't let someone else do it too. in all seriousness, though, the idea is, know what you consume. i always try and give tips to people on so many because you're making these decisions super quick. one, do you know where the outlet is that actually produced the information that you're consuming? if they're not telling you where they're physically located at, there's probably a reason, they're probably not up to snuff in terms of their editorial processes. the second part is, do you know

who the author is, particularly memes, pictures with seven words that feel good oftentimes aren't true. do you know who made that or where it came from? can you figure that out? the third part is how does that information source make their money? if they don't have ads on their website, you can't figure out how they're paying their bills but somehow they write 50 memes a day or 15 news stories a day, how do they do that? do you understand what their motivations are in terms of their content production? listen more than you speak. read more than you write. watch more than you film. the current generation is the first one that can make more content than they can consume. it's very clear they mostly make that content from themselves oftentimes, right? they're constantly broadcasting, producing. it makes it very hard for anyone to actually consume anything if you're spending so much time producing content rather than consuming content. the biggest thing, if i could leave one thing for you today, is understand what you will tend to believe. more propaganda, when you go back even through time, people

tend to believe four things. it's biological, it's physiological, it's psychological. the thing that you heard first, that when you hear the most, that which comes from a trusted source, and that which is not accompanied by a rebuttal, no challenge. that's basically your social media feed, right? speed, speed, speed first. most, most, most. over and over again. because liking, amplification, those sort of things. trusted source. implicit bias. that's your tribe, you trust them naturally. the source of the information is not actually who made the content. it's who gave it to you. this is where it gets muddled on social media and you block out potential rebuttals to that information. think about that for your own strategy when you're dealing with the public. first, most trusted source, rebuttal. you have to be fast. you have to be repetitive, even though it seems stupid that you have to keep saying over and

over that this this the voter roll and i have it and it hasn't been hacked. you have to keep doing it over and over. you have to be a trusted source and be right 100% of the time, so when you walk out the door, you have to be accurate, accurate, accurate. and in terms of being in that space so people can hear you challenge them, if it's happening in social media, you might need to be there on the ground. the best way to demobilize a troll is to show up at their house. show up in their communities. if they're broadcasting some conspiracy about your polling place, be there. knock them down. come with data. bring your voting machines. have your voter rolls. we tend to think we just post back, tweet back, put out more press briefings, that will do it. no, no. nothing works better than a direct challenge to someone who is pushing disinformation against you. the last thing is know when you're an expert. and i'll conclude here and sort of wrap up with our project.

there's no winner, when it's the death of expertise, people tend to say, experience. i've been doing this for 30 years. and i'll say, you've been analyzing social media for 30 years? and they'll go, well, this sort of thing. and i'll go, i'm pretty sure not. the next thing, competency. what is your actual experience, what are their degrees, what are their certifications? the third is, what is the analysis they use to arrive at it? they used to teach us, this thing called the intelligence community, we were always evaluating information sources and experts, right? experience, competence, analysis. how do we put that together to understand people what they're putting out in terms of information and what they're trying to make you believe. the last part that i want to close with is what i work with two different teams doing. democracy fund is a big supporter of us and it is designed to protect the elections in 2020. the foreign policy research institute, we have have a team,

it's called the foreign influence election 2020 project. and i've been able to recruit, i think we're at 33 interns now that are students from all around the country. they all work remotely. but we go through russian, iranian, and china state-sponsored propaganda to see how they're talking about the election and the candidates. we've done a lot of analysis around russia and iran, we've got china coming up. but that is a good forecast to kind of look at how serious are they about election 2020, where are their interests. we'll talk about technology and electoral systems. we'll try and push that out into the social media space. the other thing is called the hamilton 68 dashboard. the first version of this we built out of the social media accounts we've been looking at, my team had been looking at, and the alliance for securing democracy created a dashboard that runs in real time around overt content from russia and i believe they have china and iran also coming on, just in the next

few weeks, that tells you really what that news cycle is about. that's one part to tell you kind of where vulnerabilities are that might be around election 2020. it's a second part to challenge those candidates that say that there's all sorts of people messing around in our election, and they go, i don't know, we've been watching it for a couple of years and i don't see it, maybe you're going to lose just because people didn't vote for you. so it's two parts this time. it's a different wrinkle, right? that's part of your challenge about election-rigged voter fraud. this will be a big issue we'll be studying in the summertime, after the conventions we know disinformation will rapidly emerge in that space and we'll use those two projects, we'll see it, my team and the interns, the young people, it's pretty amazing to watch how fast they can read news compared to me, which i enjoy because we've gotten through about -- i think we'll approach 7,000 news stories since january 1st of last year with this team.

they also use it for their own college projects and papers. with that, thank you for having me here today, and good luck. [ applause ] democratic presidential candidate tulsi gabbard holds a town hall meeting in somersworth, new hampshire, live on our companion network, c-span. during this election season, the candidates beyond the talking points are only revealed over time. but since you can't be everywhere, there's c-span. our campaign 2020 programming differs from all other political coverage for one simple reason. it's c-span. we've brought you your unfiltered view of government every day since 1979. and this year we're bringing you an unfiltered view of the people seeking to steer that government this november. in other words, your future.

so this election season, go deep, direct, and unfiltered. see the biggest picture for yourself and make up your own mind. with c-span's campaign 2020, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. 75 years ago this month, the united states, great britain, and the soviet union met to discuss a post-world war ii germany and a liberated europe. sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv's real america, the 1945 documentary of that meeting, "the yalta conference." >> i come from the crimea conference with a firm belief that we have made a good start on the road to a world of peace. never before have the major allies been more closely united, not only in their war aims but also in their peace aims.

>> and at 4:30 on "oral histories," we'll talk with medal of honor recipient herschel "woody" williams. >> the marines around me started firing their weapons into the air, screaming and yelling and that kind of stuff. and i really thought everybody had lost their mind there for a second. i couldn't figure out what was going on. and then i caught on what was going on because they were looking at mt. surabachi and there's old glory. >> this weekend, explore our nation's past on american history tv on c-span3. the head of global policy management for facebook testified before congress about what the social media company is doing regarding disinformation and doctored videos. at this hearing we'll also hear from